Blackphone 2 has beefier specs than its predecessor, same focus on privacy

A little more than a year after the debut of the original Blackphone, its successor has been revealed, and its just as privacy-centric as the original.

The Blackphone 2’s got a 5.5-inch 1920x1080 display, up from the original Blackphone’s 4.7-inch 1280x720 screen, as well as Gorilla Glass 3. Packed inside of the Blackphone 2 is a 64-bit octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM, a microSD card slot, and a 3060mAh battery that is removable, a feature that’s becoming increasingly rare in the smartphone world.

Switching over to software, the Blackphone 2 runs PrivatOS 1.1 atop Android. PrivatOS 1.1 is custom software that’s laser-focused on privacy and security. It includes a Spaces UI that aims to keep different apps and services in encrypted and separate from one another. You can create an Enterprise Space for work documents, a Personal Space for all of your own docs, and a Silent Space that’ll won’t record anything you do in it.

The Blackphone 2 is slated to launch in the summer with a retail price of $629.

Silent Circle, maker of the Blackphone, is also prepping a tablet called the Blackphone+. However, details on that slate are still light.

In case it wasn’t already clear, Silent Circle is all about privacy. “While the rest of the market is going one way, with selfie sticks and curved screens, we’re going down another, to the heart of the problems, sticking with security and privacy,” said Mike Janke, co-founder of Silent Circle. The company appears to be focusing heavily on the enterprise, trying to go after the same companies that BlackBerry has been working with. We’ve seen Apple and Google make their own enterprise pushes recently, and so while Blackphone may be fighting a BlackBerry that’s not quite the heavy-hitter that it once was, it’s also got to compete with giants like Google and Apple for enterprise business.

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